A stunt performer has died on the set of The Expendables 2. The accident was reported by a newspaper in Bulgaria, where the film is shooting, and was confirmed by Nu Image, the production company. He has not yet been identified. Okay, I’ll admit, my headline wasn’t in the best taste. An innocent person dying is no laughing matter, unless it’s a clown.

Police reported that a stuntman working on the movie The Expendables 2 has been killed and another injured and taken to hospital after an accident on the Ognyanovo dam near Elin Pelin.
The accident took place when the two men, both reported in the Bulgarian media to be foreigners, were performing a stunt involving an explosion in a rubber boat on the dam. The individuals concerned were members of the film’s second unit stunt team. The film’s main unit were reportedly shooting in Bansko, two-and-a-half hours away, at the time.
The injured stuntman is in stable condition, but is unconscious, according to hospital sources reported in the Bulgarian media which has also reported that he was in intensive care. [SofiaEcho]

UPDATE: From the Hollywood Reporter:Two stuntmen were in a rubber boat in the water when, around 7 pm local time, a planned bomb explosion went wrong. One of the stuntmen was killed on the spot. The other was taken to hospital in Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, where he remains in serious condition.

So it appears Bulgaria might not be the bastion of strict job safety standards we all had assumed. Learn something new every day, I guess. It just goes to show, not even God wants an Expendables sequel. How many more people need to die before we learn that retro novelty films don’t need sequels? At the very least, everyone in the cast should have to get a tattoo of this guy’s name.

Additional Note: The best part of that banner image? Why the f*ck are they at the stock exchange?

Dolph probably thought it was part of the script. He probably picked the guys head up and put it on the tip of gun like a puppet. “It’s classic movie magic guys, ooooh, look at the head. It’s corn syrup, guys… strangely warm, blood flavored corn syrup.” Probably.

I’m just glad the Stafe is still alive and well. If he’s gone, my world of typed-phonetic-accent choices would be down to Wahlberg, Van-Damme, Schwarzenegger, Stallone, and of course BALLA. That’s a world I don’t want to imagine living in